


Oaths

by winterkill



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Brienne will smack some sense into him, Episode Fix-it: s08e04 The Last of the Starks, Episode: s08e04 The Last of the Starks, F/M, Jaime is an idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 19:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18784954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterkill/pseuds/winterkill
Summary: Brienne wonders if some oaths don't need to be spoken at all. Yet another episode 4 fix-it fic.





	Oaths

**Author's Note:**

> I'll just add this to the lovely pile of fix-it fics, in before canon ruins it on Sunday. This feels completely derivative and unoriginal, but writing it sure made me feel better. I've never written this pairing before (despite desperately shipping it for several years).

Brienne spends a lot of time thinking about loyalty--oaths she's sworn, both fulfilled and unfulfilled, about choosing _honor_ over personal desires and what that means. Oaths drove her to King's Landing, and northward to find Sansa. When she was hungry, cold, and battle-weary, her promise to Catelyn kept her in her saddle. She repeats her oaths, a litany that grants her strength, as the dead pour through the walls into Winterfell's keep.

Oaths didn't save the broken pile of soldiers burned outside Winterfell's walls, though. There's no honor on the battlefield, only the dirt, blood, and screams of dying men. Oaths were just words, broken as easily as they were sworn in the first place. It's the first lesson Brienne learned when she left Tarth--people _lie_ , and words can twist and take on a life of their own.

And now, Brienne wonders if oaths don't need to be spoken at all.

Jaime, next to her, the other half of Ned Stark's sword in his left hand, was a kind of oath. Fear radiated off of him in waves, but he'd stood with her, ready to die for a greater cause. The look in Jaime's eyes before he'd kissed her was another oath, one she was always told no one would ever swear to her. And when he'd fumbled, one-handed, with his clothes, and she'd reached out to help, Brienne was swearing an oath of her own--to step in where he fell short or stalled, to bolster him when he needed it. She knew, in that moment, down to the depths of her _soul_ , that he would do the same for her.

The act continues like that between them, silent promises traded back and forth without a thought spared to equity. They're way past the point of any concept of debt between them. She sheds the pervasive feeling of ungainliness that follows her when she isn't holding a sword. Brienne knows she isn't beautiful, but the weight of Jaime's regard for her makes her feel treasured, and she realizes that she _needed_ someone to look at her like that. And for a few weeks, they _work_. Brienne begins and ends her day next to Jaime, and allows herself to daydream a future she thought she wouldn't live to see. She imagines herself in a life, beyond on the battles, that she never considered herself fit for. Sansa smiles warmly at her, and Tyrion teases until she's crimson, and Brienne is so fucking happy that she doesn't even mind.

She drops the guard on her soft, romantic heart, so it breaks twice as hard when she walks to the courtyard to find Jaime saddling his horse.

 _He's lying to me_ , she thinks, when Jaime rides out the gate. She stares at him until he vanishes into the foggy night, and her tears burn cold on her cheeks in the frigid air.

 _I'm a hateful man_.

 _You don’t have to be_ , Brienne wants to shout after him, but she can’t summon her voice, and then it’s too late. A hateful man doesn’t lose his sword hand protecting his captor, nor is there anything hateful in the way Jaime buried his face against her neck, just hours before. Brienne can search back _years_ , and finds so much more to Jaime Lannister than hatefulness.

Brienne stands in the courtyard until her hands and feet are numb; a dressing gown does nothing against the icy northern air. When her tears stop, she feels a sense of loss so profound that it nearly puts her to her knees. She wants to scream, or chase after him, or _something_ . Her oath to Sansa stops her--as long as she remains in Winterfell, Brienne is honor-bound to remain at her side. Running after an idiot Lannister in the middle of the night is counter to _that_ oath. Brienne tries to use the commitment to bolster her resolve and fails miserably.

There’s another oath, though, one she’d sworn to herself the first night Jaime slept beside her. _I’ll protect him. Even from himself, if needed._

Brienne had probably been swearing that oath to herself for a lot longer than she realized.

* * *

Sansa is still awake when Brienne knocks on her door.

“Lady--” Sansa starts when she opens the door, smiling, “No, _Ser_ Brienne.”

She’s so distraught that hearing _Ser_ before her name doesn’t even make her heart leap like it had every day since Jaime knighted her.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, my lady, but--”

Sansa stops her with gentle hand on her arm, “You’re not interrupting. What is it?” She looks down, noticing Brienne’s unusual state of dress. She’s wearing boots now, at least.

“It’s Jaime,” Brienne blurts, “he _left_ , and I--”

She what, though? Does she want Sansa to free her from service to chase after Jaime?

“Go,” Sansa tells her, “You don’t need to protect me here. This is my home.”

Brienne nods, “Th-Thank you. Please...tell Podrick that I’ll be back.”

Sansa answers with a resolute nod; Brienne rushes out the door.

* * *

A thirty-minute head start should make catching up with Jaime possible, as long as he sticks to the road. So, Brienne rides, her horse’s hooves crunching against the packed snow. She has no idea what she's going to say, if she even finds him. Maybe she'll smack him with his uselessly ostentatious gold hand.

_Don't push me away._

_You're a terrible liar._

_I love you_.

The last one remains unsaid. She thought Jaime _knew--_ like so many other unsaid truths between them. Maybe, if she'd been explicit, she wouldn't be riding a horse from Winterfell in the middle of the night. Maybe he would have _understood_ and returned to her when she called. A figure manifests from the murky blackness before her, and Brienne's time to ponder what she should say is truncated. She slows her horse until it’s walking next to Jaime’s. They both stop moving. The moonlight does little in the way of illuminating his expression, but she hears the surprise in his voice when he says “Brienne?”

“You’re a terrible liar, Jaime Lannister.” It’s the least heart-wrenching of the options she’d turned over in her mind.

Jaime’s breath hitches like she struck him. “ _Brienne_ ,” he starts anew, “go back. There’s no point to you being here. Stay and protect Sansa.”

“Lady Sansa gave me her leave,” Brienne replies, as though that clears everything up.

“...That doesn’t mean you should be here.”

Anger rushes through her, then, the blinding kind like she felt when she executed Stannis. Violence is a necessity to protect those she cares about, but Brienne _never_ enjoys it. Now, though, she wants to knock Jaime off his horse and pummel some sense into him because her _tears_ hadn’t moved him.

“I asked you to _stay_ ,” she repeats, attempting to keep her tone measured, “and you didn’t listen.” She’s grateful for the darkness, then, if only to hide her oncoming angry tears.

“I have to go to her,” Jaime sounds resigned, bound by an oath, deep in a place Brienne can’t reach--a part of him that belongs to Cersei, weathering every abuse and betrayal.

“You said you'd serve under my command,” she spits, “I didn’t give you leave to run off in the night and martyr yourself.”

“Brienne, this is who I am, I think. I put it aside for a few days, but...”

 _Fuck Cersei_ , Brienne thinks, damning the woman whose specter stretches the miles and miles between them and King’s Landing.

“You’re who you make yourself to be. You came to Winterfell because you _knew_ it was the right thing to do.” She reaches out and touches Jaime’s right wrist with her gloved hand, right above where she knows the leather straps keep his gold hand in place.

The touch must compel Jaime to reach for her because he drops the horse’s reins and puts his left hand over hers. He tightens his fingers around hers and repeats her name into the darkness between them.

“Tell me the truth, please.” Brienne hates how her voice wavers.

“I have to kill her,” Jaime whispers, “No one else can get close enough, and the odds aren’t in our favor in open combat.”

 _Our_ favor _._

“Then we’ll go together.” That she would accompany him was never a question in her mind.

“She’ll kill you.” Jaime pulls his arm away from her, “I’ll die happier knowing you’re out of her reach.”

“No one is _dying_.” They’d survived bandits, bears, and hordes of undead crawling through the walls, protecting one another, and Brienne will be damned if she’d let Cersei kill either of them. “Why did you grant me knighthood?”

“Because no one is more deserving of the honor.” The clouds part enough to let some moonlight through, and she glimpses Jaime’s expression, sad and stricken. “You protect people, and keep your oaths.”

“And _you_ don’t?”

Brienne has never been able to convince Jaime that he is redeemed, that honor never left him, and was only buried under a damaging kind of loyalty. She gotten close, or thought she had, in the past few weeks, but maybe the endpoint was more distant than she imagined. Jaime’s sins weigh heavy on him.

“The only oaths I’ve sworn and kept I’ve passed to you. I broke yet another, lying to you and leaving you standing there alone, didn’t I?”

“We made no oaths between us.”

“I’ve been _trying_ , though, to promise you something.”

A hand on Jaime’s wrist isn’t enough--that simple contact, or a look, may have satisfied Brienne before but won’t now. Her heart thumps wildly in her chest, even now, at the thought of touching him. She descends from her horse, trusting the animal not to bolt into the night if left untethered for a moment.

“Oathkeeper,” Brienne says, voice low, one hand going to the pommel of her sword, and the other reaching for Jaime. “It’s named for the one who gave it to me.”

Jaime climbs down, left hand gripping her own, and a strangled noise leaves him when Brienne wraps her arms around him. She’s half a head taller, another feature that she always assumed made her unwanted. Brienne is grateful for her stature, now, because she can support Jaime when he grabs the back of her cloak with such desperation.

“It shouldn’t be,” he mumbles into her shoulder.

“I stand by my naming decision.”

He lets out a mirthless laugh that’s muffled by the fur lining the neck of her cloak. “You've always had an uncommonly high opinion of me.”

“It’s earned; I assure you.” Brienne is careful about who she swears her oaths to; Jaime is worthier than he knows.

When he kisses her, Brienne forgets how _cold_ everything is, how it seeps into the marrow of her bones. There is a warmth here that she didn’t know existed. Jaime touches her cheek, and she leans down the fraction necessary to meet him. His beard tickles her skin, a dozen other moments come to mind, and she smiles into the kiss. His golden hand rests at the small of her back.

“You won’t go back, will you?” The hand on her cheek slides into her hair and holds her there. There’s an intensity to Jaime’s gaze that derails Brienne completely from the conversation at hand.

“Not unless you accompany me,” she responds eventually, tightening her arms around him.

Brienne wants to drag Jaime back to Winterfell. The peace would be a lie though, when Cersei waits at King’s Landing, and Daenerys sails south.

“And you won’t let me go?”

“Not unless I accompany you.” She kisses Jaime again, trying to pour into it the things she can’t say--the silent oaths, spoken in her heart. Brienne isn’t delicate, and she certainly doesn’t kiss the way Cersei must have, but he sighs against her just the same.

“You’re too _good_ to argue with, Ser Brienne,” Jaime whispers, a mere breath of space between them.

“Then _listen_.” She reaches between them to grab Jaime’s face, just as she had in the courtyard. His eyes widen, and he looks like he’s about to run from her again. “There’s no honor in stealing away in the night to ride to certain death.”

“I'm trying to do the _right_ thing, for once in my damned life.” Brienne can hear the self-loathing dripping from each word.

“But the wrong way,” she corrects.

“The _only_ way. No one else can get close enough to her. She'll let me in if I just--”

Jaime glances away, and Brienne tightens her grip. “Cersei is _mad_. She's just as likely to kill you at the gates, and then what did you die for?”

“ _Nothing_.”

“Do you _want_ to die?” Brienne thought Jaime might, long ago, after Locke had taken his sword hand. At Harrenhal, he'd looked like there was nothing left in the world for him.

He smiles at her, wry. “In the arms of the woman I love.”

Brienne's heard this wish before, but _in_ _the arms of the woman I love_ always meant _Cersei_. A part of him belongs to her, in life or in death. Brienne couldn't love him if she didn't accept that. Not until this very moment, though, had she considered the possibility that the object of Jaime's wish had changed. It twists the wish in a way that Brienne can't decide is better or worse. It means he _loves_ her, which is thrilling, but it's a wish she will never allow to be granted.

“Find a new wish; no one is dying,” Brienne repeats, a command, one that has too many variables to enforce.

_I will drive the sword into Cersei myself, if I must._

Jaime smiles, softer, before releasing Brienne and climbing back on his horse. “Then, Ser Brienne, come keep me alive. I'm not what I once was.”

A statement with a dozen meanings, but Brienne favors all of them, even if Jaime means his diminished fighting capacity. She can compensate for that, and she's never been so happy to be _herself_.

It's a long ride to King's Landing, so she gets back onto her horse and follows Jaime into the darkness.


End file.
